


That Would Be Enough

by AyeletSita



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hunter Sally, sally centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-02 07:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13313691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AyeletSita/pseuds/AyeletSita
Summary: "When did you learn to fire a shotgun?" Her son asked her in the middle of the end of the world."At the age of ten," she wanted to say. "In a family friend’s backyard in Texas."Sally Jackson had always hated lying to her son, she didn't tell him his father had died, instead calling it being "lost in sea". Lying was a second nature to her, but Sally always prefered her first."About two seconds ago," she lied through gritted teeth. For a second, Sally could almost feel her uncle's hand squeezing her shoulder, the only way he knew how to tell her "good job!"





	1. Prologue: Lies

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this entire thing pretty much in one sitting (and by that I mean all last night up to 4am and then most of today up until now) but I finished this, which doesn't happen too often (looking at fanfics I was sure I'd be done with a year ago yet are still waiting for me).  
> So, a couple of things about this fic. It's a crossover between Percy Jackson and Supernatural, but mostly you just need to know that there are monsters in the world of Supernatural and people who hunt them.  
> I kept the name of Sally's mother as Laura because that's what I was used to before Uncle Rick messed up and renamed her Estelle.  
> It's five chapters long but as I said, it's finished, so I'm going to upload the prologue and the first chapter one and add one every day. I hope you'll enjoy it, please leave a kudos and\or a comment if you liked it (or just feel like doing either of them).

"When did you learn to fire a shotgun?" Her son asked her in the middle of the end of the world.  
"At the age of ten," she wanted to say. "In a family friend’s backyard in Texas."  
Sally Jackson had always hated lying to her son, she didn't tell him his father had died, instead calling it being "lost in sea". Lying was a second nature to her, but Sally always prefered her first.  
"About two seconds ago," she lied through gritted teeth. For a second, Sally could almost feel her uncle's hand squeezing her shoulder, the only way he knew how to tell her "good job!"  
"Percy, we'll be fine. Go!" She urged her son even as she wanted to run to him and wrap her arms around him and never let him go. Sixteen years ago Sally Jackson decided to leave that part of her past behind her; she didn't teach her son how to shoot a shotgun, she didn't tell him about the monsters crawling in the night. She didn’t even tell him the truth about his own father, not even now. Her son had enough monsters to slay without adding hers. She made sure that at least the space under his bed was safe.  
That was a mother’s job after all, and these days, Sally was a mother first and everything else second.


	2. Chapter One: Childhood

Sally Jackson spent most of her [not really] childhood in one of three bases her uncle made himself over the states. Alabama, Texas, Nebraska. Sally knew that road better than she knew her current neighborhood. The main roads and the deserted ones, her favorite diners and gas stations and every important point of navigation in the horizon.  
Rich had an old friend with a big farmhouse in Texas, his last name was Guiner (still is, probably) but for the life of her Sally couldn’t remember his first name. She spent years there, burying monsters’ corpses in Guiner’s backyard, practicing her aim, again and again until she hit all the old, empty beer bottles. Rich knew Guiner for decades, he was the oldest friend he had, the only person in the world he truly trusted. (Sally liked to think he trusted her, too, at least a bit, but was never quite sure). They went on hunts together, covered each other’s backs, sat side by side in libraries and tried to put the mystery together (whoever said you can be an idiot and a hunter had obviously been trying to give them bad name).  
As soon as Rich got her into his custody, he organized the paperwork. When he died, Sally still a few months shy of eighteen, it would be Guiner who’d be named her guardian (he helped her pack what little belongings she had, her mom’s old jewelry box, her favorite shotgun, the notebooks she filled with diary entries and ideas for stories yet to be written. He helped her pack and then he let her go. Some days, Sally was almost bitter about it, because she was seventeen and confused and alone and Guiner didn’t even try. Most days, she was grateful he set her free, Guiner was even less a parent than Rich ever was).

Nebraska Sally liked the most, but it was always the place they spent the least time at. She liked Nebraska, because Nebraska meant people, (people other than Guiner who barely took notice of her or civilians that Rich never let her grow too close to). Her uncle wasn’t a trusting person by nature, nor was he a friendly one, but he made a point to visit the Roadhouse as frequently as he could. The place was always full with hunters, the closest thing to a center of this network of protectors, of crazy people who dedicated their life to fight what little knew even existed.  
Rich never allowed himself to get drunk at the Roadhouse and he ordered Sally to do the same (she drunk her first beer at twelve, it was part of the life, but never quite grew a taste for it. Ellen usually gave her a bottle of Coke and that was good enough). He kept his pistol in the back of his pants and a silver knife in his boot. That was okay, most of the others did too.  
The roadhouse was hardly a homely place. Hunters weren’t a very friendly crowd. This were the people Sally grew up around, rough men with a deep love for alcohol and the second amendment. She grew up knowing they were all saving lives. She grew up knowing they weren’t heroes.  
When she was young they looked down on her, she’d go between their legs, sometimes sit down next to them, listen to them retelling story about glorious hunts (that even as young and naive as she was then, Sally knew weren’t glorious at all). When she grew up a bit and started to look like a woman (as one creepy fifty-something-years-old hunter named Davis so eloquently put) the treatment of her changed. Sally was considered a hunter herself by this point, a rookie, a joke, a legacy that didn’t deserve the respect real hunters did, but a hunter nonetheless. Instead of sitting at the corner, eavesdropping, she sat side by side with big, burly men, her hand holding a bottle (a beer she didn’t drink if someone insisted, most of the time just some soda). She commented on the stories, laughed and shared some of her own knowledge.  
Reflecting back on it all, Sally would think she didn’t have much of a childhood, but these days in the Roadhouse were as good as it got. She fit right in their, that fifteen years old girl, with blue eyes still a bit too naive for the profession and hands that already mastered sharpshooting.  
Sometimes, some creep like Davis would leer over her newly grown breasts. Bill would get from behind the counter and punch the idiot in the face. When Bill was away, Ellen would pull the shotgun from under the counter and threaten the morons, but she wouldn’t shoot. Hunters only understood power, violence. Ellen was more than a hunter (she was a mother, she had a little girl, had the guy not backed off, she would’ve shot, but they always did).  
Sally’s childhood was dangerous, but it was also safe.

Rich didn’t enjoy the visits to the Roadhouse nearly as much as she did, but he never backed off. He sat next to seasoned hunters, exchanged stories and information, fake IDs and ammo and sometimes even agreed to go on a joint hunt. It was a show of confidence he didn’t have in humanity.  
“It’s a dangerous world, Sally,” he tried to explain her, for the hundredth time. “There are monsters in the dark, but there are also monsters in men.” Rich was just as big and rough as the rest of them, his eyes just as dark, his fingers just as twitchy. He wasn’t just telling her to be weary of the world, he was explaining why people would be weary of them.  
“You have to prove yourself,” he said, “and then remind them again and again, we’re good, we’re friends, allies, whatever you want. We’re no enemies.”  
Rich was never very good at raising his niece, he was a hard man like that. He had light brown hair and hazel eyes he claimed her dad had as well (pictures never managed to capture the color, Sally assumed her eyes were her mother’s but she didn’t truly know). Sally always remembered him tall but looking back, he was quite average. His muscle mass was lesser of many others in the Roadhouse. Sally figured out at some point that he probably only shaved every other day because there was always the beginning of a beard of his chin, but never a proper one.  
The Jacksons had been hunters for a long while, Rich never said how exactly they came into the business (if he even knew) but he said he’d been hunting his entire life. Sally asked, when she grew up a bit, about her parents, but Rich had frustratingly little to say. Sally’s dad was his older brother and there was nearly a decade between the two. He, too, hunted for as long as Rich could remember but they had a falling out about Jim married Sally’s mom. They met up once or twice every year for some odd hunt. The rest of the year they only kept in touch through monthly calls, (always to voicemail), just to confirm they were both still alive.  
Her parents were hunters, that was the first truth her uncle told her, he didn’t know how often they hunted, didn’t know if her mom had always been a hunter or if it was Jim who brought the supernatural to her life, didn’t know much at all. Sally grew up knowing her mom’s name was Laura, she used to read her stories before bed and hug her tightly every time they parted (Sally couldn’t quite remember the circumstances of the parting, only that it happened at least once). She learnt to make it enough.  
She grew up knowing her dad’s favorite gun, but not what made him laugh (she dreamt of his laughter sometimes, big and warm and safe like no other voice could ever be. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t remember what he laughed at). Rich didn’t sugarcoat it for her, perhaps it would’ve been kinder, to tell a five-years-old orphan a happy story, but Rich didn’t quite know how to be kind (he definitely didn’t know what to do with a five-years-old girl). He told her about the fights they had, about Jim’s selfishness and impatience. He’d talk about his kills, about the great, gruesome hunts, he’d mention briefly being taught to drive by him. He didn’t make him a hero.  
“Jim and Laura,” he told her cruely, “were two idiots to board that flight, with a kid at home. They were selfish, Sally, they fucked up.” Sally cried herself to sleep that night (eleven and small and naive despite knowing better. People - hunters - look down at you when you refuse to see the worst of the world. Sally knew it all, but decided to close her eyes. This wasn’t idiocy, it was bravery, it was a choice).  
Over the eleven years Rich took care of Sally (and the one year she took care of him) Rich taught her very little good things, but he was always honest. Sally learnt to appreciate it. After he died, she’d throw his lessons away, but she keep his intention. Rich didn’t know what he was doing, but he loved her, in his own way. He tried.

Alabama was Rich’s privet base of operations. He had a small house there, it had two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen and respectable garden. He bought it when he first got Sally, and when she turned six he enrolled her in the school just down the street. He chose the house specifically for that, so young Sally could get herself from and to school easily enough.  
Sally didn’t decorate her room in that small house. For years, she didn’t even think of it as hers. She had a room in Guiner’s house and she felt there more alert, but also more like she belonged. This room, it was little more than a necessity in life. She had a small bed, no closet (her clothes neatly packed in a box) and a bookstand Rich helped her build when she was eight. She did her homework on the floor and spent the rest of her time there in the garden, growing flowers and vegetables (the first more successfully than the second).  
They spent more than half of their time there, Sally going to school, Rich saving up some money in his daytime work, and both never liked it. As soon as school finished every summer, they’d head out of the house that never quite felt like home. Christmas they spent at Guiner’s, Easter at the Roadhouse (Ellen organized a small hunt for the few children of hunters around. Their last year there Sally held little three-years-old Jo’s hand as they searched for the chocolate. Her laughter was so sweet, but not as sweet as Percy’s would one day be).

When she was young, Rich wouldn’t let her out of his sight but sometimes around her tenth birthday she grew tall enough to be trusted to not just break down when not supervised. Sally got herself to and from school, she went to the little grocery shop ten minutes away and bought her food. She learnt to cook. She put herself to bed. (She always remembered to draw the salt lines, to keep the gun hidden in the kitchen clean and the knife in the living room sharp. She only snuck into her uncle’s room on very lonely nights). Rich, meanwhile, was off to Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas. The older she got, the furthest her dared to go.  
(He never went to the Roadhouse without her. That was something, too).

Sally never asked to be a hunter. Rich never asked her to be. (Her parents didn’t either, but they were hunters, and they had her and then went on a hunt together and got killed. They didn’t need to).  
Rich taught her impatiently. He would take her with him to the library and she’d learn how to research from watching. Guiner would be better at teaching, explaining to her how to track down possible ghosts according to the newspaper articles.  
Guns was something Rich was more comfortable with, so when Sally turned ten he bought her one as a present and made her spend all of the afternoon practicing in Guiner’s backyard, (Sally made herself practice, too. This was her legacy. This was safety. This was her chance to make her uncle proud. This was something she put her mind into, and Sally hated doing things half-way). They ate a cake after that and this two ridicules, bitter men (they looked so old to Sally’s young eyes but they really weren’t) even attempted to sing her “happy birthday”. For that kindness, Sally would learn how to bake real cake, not one bought from the store, and make it for them for each of their birthday for the next seven years. (After Rich died, Sally stopped baking for a long while, even when she had a kitchen again and could. She’d only return to it once Percy started to eat sweets, and then, Sally would make him cookies. Cakes were for older, wearier men).

Rich took her along for hunts for as long as Sally could remember, using her as a distraction for law enforcement or as a means to gain the trust of important witnesses. She helped with the research, the maintenance of the equipment, but ultimately, she waited at home (at the motel room, at Guiner’s, at the house in Alabama).  
Her first proper hunt was just three months before her fourteenth birthday (Percy’s first hunt - first quest - was just two months before his thirteenth). It was a vengeful spirit, which made sense if Sally’s statistics were accurate, (which she doubted they were, Sally excelled in English but her skills in maths left a lot to be desired), 42% of all hunts were vengeful spirits.  
Sally didn’t like using words like “Addicted” but she couldn’t quite shake the pull to that adrenaline buzz after the first time. Rich grew to trust her (at least for a bit, at least for simple tasks on simple hunts) and Guiner said with a fake offended tone that they made quite a team, Rich didn’t need him anymore. They really did.  
Rich was in charge of most of the physical aspect, Sally’s much smaller and weaker frame simply could not be ignored. He was the one who put on a costume and pretended to be a cop, a reporter, a private investigator and so on. Sally put on a pair of jeans and some tight earrings and talked with witnesses around, pretending to be a curious bystander, a shocked teenager, a lovely, kind girl. Sally was already practiced with lies (school taught her that much) but it was on the job that she perfected it into art.  
They learnt to coordinate, to predict each other’s moves and communicate plans within seconds. Rich dug up the grave and Sally watched his back, shooing the ghost away with her iron rod. When the job was done well, Rich almost smiled, almost told her she done well (he was never good enough with words, the bitter, young, old man who still had no idea how to raise a child. That was okay, Sally decided, she could understand what he said without saying. It was enough enough.  
It really wasn’t).


	3. Chapter Two: An End

Sally collected data over the years. In her small notebook she wrote what happened to her today and ideas for a book but also statistics for monsters’ favorite hunting grounds and frequency of vengeful spirits appearance. She also kept track of the hunters themselves.  
Harrison who once killed two shapeshifters with one bullet (or so he said) died at the age of thirty three.  
Creepy Davis died at the age of forty four.  
Greg Bails, who hunted a Nordic pagan god with Rich once, died at the age of twenty nine.  
Old Bernie, who always sat with the back to the wall and had his shotgun on the table (much to Ellen’s dismay) died at fifty six. He was called old for a reason.  
Sally always knew chances were her uncle would die young. Rich would die, Guiner would die and Sally… Sally might die too. She didn’t think quite that far. She had thought it over, wrote possibilities in her diary. She’d be too slow and a ghost would strike Rich down. He would be hunting with that newbie - Ben - and the idiot would get him bitten by a werewolf, so Rich would shoot himself dead before he could hurt anyone. He and Guiner would go on a hunt for something big - a god, a demon, something above their pay grade - and they just won’t come back.  
Never did Sally imagined that cancer, of all things, would be what took Richard Jackson down.  
Rich was growing weaker for a while, but they were hunters. Rich picked up a new low-paying job every time he ran out of money, he didn’t have insurance. When he got sick, he sucked it up. It was only after months passes and he still felt like shit that he went to the doctor. It took him three more months to tell Sally and seven to agree to do something except ignoring the disease festering in his stomach. It didn’t end pretty.  
Rich and Sally stopped hunting, staying in the house in Alabama permanently. Sally dropped out of high school so she could work full time and fund her uncle’s (very) expensive treatment. Guiner helped. They started going into debts.

Rich didn’t know how to be anything other than a hunter, let along a sick person. He and Sally never had a brilliant relationship, but it all really went downhill that year. He had so much anger in him. It wasn’t fair. Rich wasn’t even forty years old. He had a whole life ahead of him (he had about three years, statistically). It was never about the time, though, not really, it was about the glory that was taken away. Rich was supposed to go down swinging. Hunting monsters, saving lives, that was all Rich had ever known. That was all he ever wanted to know.  
Rich grew sicker and weaker and angrier. Sally grew tired. She cried. She didn’t complain. (She dumped Rich on Guiner some days and stole his truck to drive to the roadhouse. Sometimes she’d just enjoy the long drive. Other times she’d pick up hunters, just like Rich did up until a year ago, and go on a hunt with them. She made sure to always come back).  
One sleepless night, that Rich (bald, weak and not tall at all) spent puking his soul, her uncle begged Sally to kill him. She gave it a thorough thought, too. It would be easy enough with all the firearms in the house. She could probably even say he commited suicide and no one would bat an eye. She spent the whole night watching his pathetic form sleep restlessly, waking up to puke, then going back to sleep. Rich kept a pistol on his bed stand. Sally didn’t grab it.  
Maybe it was because suicide was giving up. Maybe because it was a move of a coward man and Sally wanted her uncle to die with dignity. Maybe even at seventeen, after everything she saw, Sally still had hope that Rich would get better.  
Sally was very good at lying. The truth, however, probably was that she was too scared. It was hard to dig up, but it made the most sense in the end of the day. Sally couldn’t kill a man. She didn’t want to shoot her uncle. She’d hate to lose the last of her family. She was afraid of being alone.

Rich Jackson died on a grey March morning in his own bed, at the house in Alabama. Sally called the hospital (she knew he was dead, she could feel the cold of his skin which she touched him, trying to wake him up. What was she supposed to do, though? Who do you call about a corpse?) Ten minutes later, she called Guiner too.  
Hunter didn’t have funerals, not real, proper ones. Hunter who fell on hunts were burned in pyre by their partners. Sometimes, their friends had a party later (with a lot of alcohol, of course) in remembrance. They didn’t get tombstones, they weren’t bury in cemeteries and no priest prayed over their bones.  
Rich didn’t die on a hunt though, and Sally doubt the hospital would be cool with them burning up his body on some woods on the side of a road. Instead, Sally made phone calls to have Rich cremated. She told them to mail the ashes to Guiner’s address and never asked him what he was going to do with it (maybe it was still sitting in some draw in his house. Maybe he scattered it on his property. Maybe Guiner was long dead, too, and whoever got hold of his belongings threw the urn to some dumpster. Sally learnt not to care).  
She let the bank take the house, because she couldn’t afford it (couldn’t for a long while, but Rich deserved the dignity to at least die in his own house and not some shitty hospital) and because she never liked the place anyway. She took one last glance at her failed garden, and said goodbye.  
Rich had a big truck that Sally once helped paint blue. It’s been through a lot, so at some places the paint was scratched off and you could see the original color. “Too flashy,” Rich would say about the bold red and clumsily correct the paint. Sally threw her bags into the bagage, got inside (like she did dozens of times before, like she was just going for a second to buy some milk) and stepped on it. She gave Guiner, the house, the place she grew up in and never grew to like, one last look.  
Sally left it all behind.


	4. Chapter Three: I Suppose That's Love

Sally chose to head to New York for three main reasons A) she’d never been to. Their hunting ground was that triangle between Alabama, Mexico and Nebraska and Rich rarely took them away beyond it and now, not longer tied down (desperately trying to turn loneliness into freedom), Sally wanted to see more of the world.  
B) In all her years of living with Rich and all the hunting stories she heard him, Guiner and hunters at the Roadhouse tell, she never heard of anyone taking on a hunt in New York. It seemed quite weird that such a central city would attract no supernatural attention.  
C) Well, to put it simply, it was New York, the Statue of Liberty, the Times Square. Sally was just seventeen years old. She still had a whole world to see and New York sounded like a great place to start at, so she did.

Life was still life. Sally had to sell the old truck soon enough, she didn’t have the money for neither the fuel nor the maintenance. She found a shitty apartment some shady dude was renting in the middle of a crime neighborhood and decided to call it her home. She called many places home, the house in Alabama, Guiner’s, sometimes even the Roadhouse. The place was moldy and the neighbors left much to be desired but Sally refused to complain.  
When he first saw her, the landlord tried to send her away.  
“A runaway?” He guessed, “go home, kid.” Her new neighborhood was full of runaways, people from bad homes that left as soon as they were out of high school, or before. They looked different from Sally. Their hair was unkept (hers was always carefully tied back in either a ponytail or a braid), their clothes were oily and dirty (Sally had been in charge of laundry since she was eight-years-old) and most notably, their eyes were untrusting. Sally had big, blue eyes that reflected all of her faith in humanity. They radiated love and kindness and hope. Sally had no living family on Earth, she was a dirty poor teenager with no education. She knew the world could be an awful place, and she smiled. The landlord thought her childlike, thought she most definitely had a home to go back to. He was wrong, but this was neither the first nor the last time someone was wrong about Sally. He accepted her money, in the end.

By this point, Sally was a practiced waitress, so that was the job she went after first. She had skill, she had a lovely smile, she had letters of recommendation from the owners of the local diners she used to work at and she wasn’t too naive to know that when all of that failed, a quick peak to her cleavage could usually solve the problem.   
Sally stood up on her own two feets. Some days, she had to beg the landlord for just one more week to pay the rent. Many nights she went to sleep hungry. She survived.

Once you were living in New York City, breathing in the polluted air and paying attention to all the little details, it was quite easy to see why there were never any hunts in New York - it was the territory of another kind of supernatural.  
Sally stumbled upon a dracaena in the corner convenience store. She shot her entire cartridge at it and when that didn’t want, she lured the beast to her apartment and ultimately cut her head off with a machete. That, finally, seemed to kill it.  
(She told her friend at work that the scratch on her left hand came from a stray cat. She didn’t actually think it would work, too tired to come up with a better excuse, but Monica just took a second look at the injury and nodded, like it made perfect sense. Years later, Sally would learn that was the Mist).

Sally spent most of her free time in one library or another, digging up information about possible hauntings - past and present. No matter how much she looked, there was little to be found. There were few and far between incidents that might’ve been vengeful spirits, but they were a long time ago, and Sally couldn’t know for sure. For the size of the city, the amount of murder victims and missing persons and just the aura the city seemed to produce, drawing people closer, New York City had little to no ghosts.

(After, she’d ask Poseidon about it, because he was a god and should know, really. She’d ask because that’s the kind of person Sally Jackson was: curious, determined and not even a bit shy. Poseidon would hesitate between being impressed and worried, old oaths echoing in his mind, and then he’d explain to her about territorial areas of that pantheon or the other. He’d say Manhattan was the Greeks’ and all the souls dying there went straight to the Underworld. He didn’t like talking about it, but Sally made him draw a map. She asked, judging by the location of their house in Alabama, where did her uncle ended up?  
“Hunters are different,” he said. “You belong to your monsters more than you belong to your ground. Faith is always taken into consideration, but even more so for hunters. You go to the afterworld you believe in, the one you fought against its people most, the one you spent most of your lives in and sometimes, yes, the one you died in the territory of.”  
“And what does that mean about Rich?” Sally asked impatiently when he finished the story. In that moment Poseidon looked at her with that glance she hated, like she was a little child. She wanted to snap, but Sally wasn’t a snapping person. She took in what people offered and said thank you, no matter how much she wanted to shout. Her uncle had muscles and snarls and pistols in his belt, Sally had her brain and her lovely smile.  
“It means I can’t tell. Hades, my brother, most likely could’ve, but good luck getting that information out of him.” Sally would never know where her uncle ended up in. Was it Elysium, deemed a hero for all the souls he saved over the years? Was it Asphodel, for never quite being a good person? Maybe he went straight to heaven and met her parents again there. Maybe he was in some Aztec afterlife. Maybe his soul just rolled over to a new body.  
Sally would know from the moment he was born that her son would end up in Elysium, and she made that enough for all the others unknowns).

Monsters were much more common in the area than ghosts, even they were a very specific kind of monster. (Later, Poseidon would tell her you needed a special metal to kill them but Sally didn’t have such a thing. That was okay, this wasn’t the first hard-to-kill monster she encountered in her life). She learnt which ones you could kill by beheading, which you had to use fire against and with which you should use a taser.  
She started noticing that some monsters, people seemed to just not notice. Sally figured it was some kind of disguise of theirs, only people who knew what they were looking at could see their true face (Poseidon told it differently, he said Sally was special, clear sighted he called her, and Sally pretended it didn’t make her feel special).  
One day, in the middle of her shift at the diner, Sally recognized an empousa sitting at a corner boot. The monster smirked at Sally and stepped outside, dragging a fazed young man along with her. Sally didn’t think twice. She excused herself, stating she was going to the bathroom, and snuck out with her pistol. It wouldn’t be enough for the empousa, Sally knew that already. The beast was baiting her, Sally had killed her friend just a week ago, but she still followed. Percy didn’t get his knack for heroics from his father. Sally Jackson could never close her eyes and let an innocent person die.  
Sally would’ve died in that parking area. She had her pistol trained on the beast and she shot, but the monster didn’t really seem to care. The iron bullets didn’t bother her at all. The guy she lured out seemed to be snapping out of the trance she put him into, or at least realized he’s in the middle of a fight, and took off. Sally could’ve died there, knowing she saved a life. That would’ve been enough, (she tried writing that into her diary that evening but she never quite managed. Sally was a wonderful liars, but she hated deceiving herself).  
It was then that Poseidon stepped in. Why he spent his time in some shitty diner’s parking area Sally would never find out. He was probably bored, it was hard not to be when you were an immortal being with infinite division of attention. He killed the empousa with the flick of his wrist, and then Sally shot the two bullets at him, one to his chest and the other to his head (they were perfect shots, but neither hit the target, they disappeared midair, never to be seen again).  
“What are you?!” Sally demanded to know. Here she was, an eighteen years old girl, dressed in the diner’s ridicules uniforms. She didn’t have any weapon aside from her empty gun, her right hook and her courage. Sometimes, that’s all you needed.

Poseidon disappeared after that. Rightfully understanding he wasn’t wanted. A week later, though, he showed up in the diner, sitting smack in the middle of her zone.  
Sally was a sensible person. She didn’t start yelling then and there. She served him, she glared, and when her shift ended he was still there. She asked him, again: “what are you?” And it only took two more days of that to get an answer.  
“I am Poseidon,” he said finally. When Sally reached for her gun he put his hand on hers and she froze, knowing all too well she’d never be fast enough to escape. “That’s the part where you introduce yourself,” he said in a tone Sally then interpreted as mockery but was probably just superior amusement.  
“Sally,” she managed to say without stammering, “Sally Jackson. I won’t let you hurt anyone.”  
“You think you could stop me, Sally Jackson?” He asked, raising an eyebrow. Others gods would’ve been offended, Poseidon, some other days, would’ve been offended. Today, however, he just found her funny, found her fascinating.  
“I’ll try,” said Sally, serious and no amused at all. This was her life, this was her parents’ and her uncle’s legacy, this was the only thing she knew how to do. “Even if it means dying.”  
“I’m not about to hurt anyone,” Poseidon promised her, but not too gravely. These were mere words, they meant as much to him as they meant to her.  
“You’re Poseidon,” repeated Sally the god’s earlier statement (maybe she should’ve questioned him, but Sally could believe the young man in front of her was the Greek god of the sea. She could almost smell the ocean off him, could see the waves reflecting in his turquoise eyes). “I know the stories.”  
“Maybe you know them wrong,” suggested the god, “or maybe I changed.” Sally was a hunter and every hunter knew monsters - demons, pagan gods - didn’t change. Sally was also herself.  
“Prove it,” she challenged him. He disappeared.  
The next day, just half an hour or so before the end of her shift, a dark haired young man showed up and sat down right in the middle of her area. She served him, then gave him a check and they walked out together.

Monica thought they were dating. She spent the slow hours gashing over Poseidon’s abs, his handsome face and the way light tinkled in his eyes. She said Sally was really lucky. Sally didn’t bother to correct her.  
At the beginning, Poseidon only walked her home. He took the bus with her, paying like any other passenger would’ve (although Sally was pretty sure he conjured the money from thin air) and answered whatever question she threw his way. She didn’t let him come inside the house (invitation was a powerful thing) but she stopped going through their meetings with her hand on top of her pistol (no matter how useless it would be against the god).  
Sally spent one long afternoon in a library, and then made a quick call to the Roadhouse to confirm the information (“didn’t hear from you in a while, kiddo. We thought we might’ve lost you,” said Bill when he recognized her voice. Sally apologized and ended the call quickly, it was the last time the two of them spoke). She learnt how to kill pagan gods. She learnt how to kill Greek gods. She learnt how to kill Poseidon (it wouldn’t have worked, but Sally didn’t know that). The weapon layed ready beneath her bed. Sally did not try to wield it.

Sometimes Poseidon would escort her on hunts. He wouldn’t be her partner, not quite, but he’d watch over her back. Sally didn’t completely trust him yet, but it was still nice, this sense of someone looking over her. She couldn’t quite remember when was the last time she felt like that.  
His smile would turn from amused to impressed, to even a bit proud (he thought to himself, ‘I told her about that’, ‘this she learnt from me’, and he wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t right. Poseidon didn’t make Sally, he didn’t build her up, she wasn’t his to take pride in but it was okay if he did. By this point, Sally started to want to be his. ‘Belonging,’ she thought to herself, ‘it could be nice’).  
He still came everyday to the diner, and every day he ordered something else, until he went through the entire (not so long menu) and started from the beginning. He walked her home, they talked. Instead of just Sally asking questions and Poseidon telling her about the world, Poseidon started to share with Sally as well.  
He told her about the sea, his kingdom, his duties. He complained about all of his siblings, but most about his arrogant brother, Zeus. Sometimes, it would almost be like he was asking for her advice. Sometimes, Sally gave it.

He told her to meet him at the sea so Sally saved up money and ordered herself a weekend in a dusty cabin in Montauk. With his hand in hers, the water didn’t feel cold at all. They walked deeper and deeper, waves crashing into them, and Sally wasn’t afraid.  
Rich had her learn to swim, in a public pool, with a bunch of other six-years-olds who made a lot of noise and pretended to be drowning. This was her first time at the sea. Sally laughed and when Poseidon looked at her, he didn’t look at her the way a god looked at a mortal, he looked at her like a man watching a marvelous woman. In that moment, that was all they were. Sally put her free hand on the side of his face, the other still firmly holding his hand, and planted a kiss on his lips before she could regret it. He kissed her back. 

Poseidon probably knew about Percy before she did, because that was the sort of thing gods just knew, and because he didn’t look surprise when she told him she was pregnant. He told her, in the next several months, about monsters coming after their boy, about destinies and broken oaths and a safe haven, just a short drive away, in Long Island.  
By then, she invited him into her house dozens of times, and they spent some nights laying together on her bed, his hand over her growing belly. It almost felt like peace. It almost felt like family.  
Sally would never regret having Percy, but it wasn’t easy. She worked double shifts until she could switch her shitty apartment in a bad area, to an apartment just as shitty in a less awful neighborhood. She put her guns in storage, leaving only one silver knife in the kitchen and switching her pistol with a pepper spray.   
She said goodbye to Poseidon, one hot summer night, her huge belly a barrier between the two of them. They kissed slowly, softly, and then Poseidon placed one chaste kiss on her forehead, to remind himself the time of the both of them being equals was over, and now she was once again a mortal woman and he, a god.  
Sally closed her eyes when he went, and cried only when the lights were off. She told her son his father wasn’t dead, just lost in sea. She said he was a good man. Sally lied quite a lot.


	5. Chapter Four: Percy

Percy Jackson was born after long hours of shouting and pushing and nurses shouting at her to push. He was crying bloody murder until he was put in his mother’s tired arms. Sally looked down at the chubby, red thing that was her son. She was twenty years old, she was a hunter (used to be a hunter), she knew what was waiting for him out there, in the world. Sally looked into her son’s eyes that were already a perfect copy of his father’s (eye color usually changed during the first or so year of your life, the color you were born with rarely the one you died with, but demigods were different, usually in much nastier ways. This was probably the nicest difference).  
Sally held her son tightly and she named him after a hero who survived. Sally spent a good ten minutes considering naming him after one of her heroes, make him a little Jimmy or a Rick, but in the end of the day, these two Jacksons died too young and not enough happy and Sally wanted better for her son. Sally would make sure he got better.  
She wrote Perseus James Jackson on his birth certificate, because she wanted a happy ending for him, but you can’t ran from the past. Percy would never know about the true legacy of her family, she swore to him, but he’d carry it nonetheless.

Percy was not an easy kid to raise. Every kid would’ve been hard to raise when you were young and alone, with no money and no proper education, but Percy was twice as hard. He was always restless, always loud, he woke up in the middle of the night and won’t go back to sleep for hours. He ran away from her in parks, nearly giving her a heart attack with the way he would suddenly disappear. He always got in trouble, even as a three-years-old, fighting with other kids, stumbling and gaining new scars.  
Sally loved him more than anything else in the world. Percy was loud and tiring but he always blubbered cheerfully as he kept her up through the night and when she located him again in the park he’d be collecting flowers for her. He gave her a huge smile, and Sally melted away. When she asked why he got into a fight, again, Percy said it was because the other boy was being mean. Not to Percy himself, no, don’t worry, mommy. He was mean to Leah, and made her cry. Someone had to do something, and Percy was there.  
Sally didn’t tell Percy about monsters, not even once. When he came back from preschool, retelling stories about boogiemen, Sally told him there was no such a thing, that he was safe. She didn’t tell him her entire family was once hunters, she never even implied that it was his job to protect others. Some things, kids just learn from watching.

Rich was never a man of faith, hunters rarely were. Young Sally didn’t think much of it either. The night after she came to pick Percy up to find him cuddling with a snake, Sally prayed, perhaps for the first time in her life. She wasn’t sure who she was addressing, Poseidon, who she knew couldn’t help? God, she didn’t believe in? Other higher force that Percy was obviously out of their jurisdiction?  
This wasn’t the first time Sally saw a monster around, she always killed them, or shooed them away. She thought she could this, she could protect him. Obviously she was failing. Sally cried herself to sleep, silently.  
The next day, Sally started looking. Two months later she found Gabriel Ugliano. Percy twisted his nose and called him Smelly Gabe, he didn’t know how right he was. Four months later the two of them were married, they moved into a nicer apartment (Percy complained for a whole year that he liked their previous home much better, cracks and mold and everything). No more snakes crawled into Percy’s bed. Sally still encountered a monster every once in a while, but they were easy enough to handle.  
Sally was miserable. Percy was safe.

No one was surprised when Percy turned out to be an awful student. He couldn’t sit still to save his life. His letters were the same, never staying in the same place long enough for Percy to read them. His math was well enough when Sally asked him questions over supper, but in class he could never stay focused long enough to solve the problems.  
“There’s no point!” He’d try to explain to her. “It’s all so stupid and Mrs. Linsky never listens to me and it’s not fair!” Sally knew everything about stuff not being fair, she also knew how quickly her son lost interest in stuff that lost interest in him. She came with Percy to school, she sat down with Mrs. Linsky and tried to explain that Percy needed his questions answered.  
“Cooperate with him and I promise you, he’d do just as well as the other students,” promised Sally. In Mrs. Linsky’s defense, she tried, but it was hard. Percy wasn’t the only pupil in the class and he required four times the attention others did. He wasn’t too beloved by other teachers, either, thanks to his knack of finding trouble everywhere. In the end of the year, Percy was expelled and they had to start it all over in a new school.

When Percy returned one Monday with bloodshot eyes and wobbly lip, Sally pestered him gently until he told her about his English teacher calling him dumb when he failed reading out loud some passage from their book. Sally stormed into the school the next day and slapped that man’s cheek before he got a single word out of his mouth (when Percy started getting in trouble in this school, they had very little motivation to try and keep him there. Sally didn’t fight it. “Good riddance,” she muttered as she looked for a new school who’d accept her wonderful, troublesome son).

Sally sat down with Percy for long hours, patiently helping him to read, to catch the letters, glue them to the paper, and read them out loud. Percy would get angry and frustrated, he’d start echoing words like “Stupid” and “Dumb”. Sally would press a kiss on his forehead and tell him he was perfect just like he was, that he was smart and funny and good.  
(When she wasn’t around, Gabe would sneer at him, mocking, insulting. Most days, Percy ignored him, taking his mother’s words over that fool’s. Other days, the words hurt, against all logic. Feelings worked like that, sometimes).

Sally could remember perhaps three instance Rich hugged her in all the years he was her guardian. He never said he loved her. He never said he was proud of her. He could barely give her a smile. Sally told herself that was enough. It wasn’t.  
She’d kiss her little boy goodnight every night, she’d hug him tightly every time they parted. She’d say “I love you” so many times a day that it became second nature. Sally wasn’t bitter over her uncle’s lack of emotional capability, she really wasn’t. She just decided her son would get much, much better.

More monsters came for Percy, less schools were willing to accept him. They both cried when Sally sent him for a boarding school for the first time (Gabe seemed happy, but he at least had the decency to keep the celebration until after Percy left, not that Percy didn’t know how happy his stepfather was to get rid of him already).  
Sally was a hunter. Sally was strong. When Gabe first hit her, she hit him right back. When he threatened to leave she relaxed her fists. Sally was a mother. She let him do whatever he wanted.  
(Some days she covered bruises with makeup and felt so ashamed, thinking what her uncle would’ve said. Some people noticed, women with keen eyes recognizing unusual fashion statements, meant to cover up wounds. They looked at her, and they pitied her, or thought her weak. Some days Sally felt weak.  
She was strong, stronger than these women could even dream of being. She protected her son. She bared it for him. She thought she could just brush it off, these hits that were so far away from the most painful thing she’s been through. She was wrong, all wounds left scars. Sally wore them gracefully).

Percy looked more and more like Poseidon with every passing day. He also looked like a scrawny kid with scraped knees who wasn’t a hunter, wasn’t a hero (shouldn’t have to be). Sally could tell he was getting stronger, she got her guns out of storage and shot every monster who dared show its face. She spent free evenings (when she knew her husband had his poker game and wouldn’t notice her gone) sitting in libraries, learning everything she could about Greek monsters and Greek gods and Greek demigods. She didn’t call to the Roadhouse to confirm that information, she was too worried someone might get it into their head that her son was a monster, too. Rich was right about that, there were monsters in men and men saw them there even when they didn’t exist.  
Soon enough, Sally knew, she’d have to send him away. She once was a young girl with big, naive eyes. She could put them on, even now, but she couldn’t get back her innocent. She wanted Percy to keep his. There were no innocent heroes. (There were too many dead ones).  
One day, Sally would drive Percy to Camp Half Blood, just a short drive away from their home. She’d drive him there, not sure if she’d ever see him again. She’d drop him there, and he’d lose that spark in his eyes. Sally didn’t believe in many things, but she made a point to believe in humanity, even when it was hard. Percy fought bullies every day, he’d fight monsters soon enough. Sally didn’t want him to lose that desperate fate she installed into him.  
(He wouldn’t. His eyes would grow grimmer. His trust would be given freely, but once broken almost impossible to mend. He’d wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares. He’d cry many tears of grieve. He’d look up to her, and he’d hug her, and he’d smile. He’d continue to try help whoever needed it for the rest of his life, he wouldn’t lost his faith in kindness. She taught him well).

Sally spent most of Percy’s life running. She hid salt lines in carpets and paint but she wouldn’t say a word about it out loud. She’d kill monsters who came too close, but she wouldn’t tell Percy about them. Rich had always been honest with her, and Sally appreciate it. He didn’t have anything more to give. Sally did. Her son grew up sheltered.  
Things changed after Percy found out the truth about his father, about himself. He was still her son, he was still too scrawny, too small. He still didn’t deserve the fate of a hero. He also couldn’t be sheltered anymore. It took her awhile, but Sally learnt to live with it (she learnt to live with much worse things).

She taught him how to drive in an empty parking lot, some two odd years before he’d be able to get a license. Percy, still young, still innocent, thought it was a game. Less than three years later he’d be running for his live with nothing on his person, not even his own memories, but he’d know how to drive. He’d live.  
The less honorable skills, Sally was less willing to teach. She taught him to hide with playful games of hide and seek. She encouraged him to run faster and faster every time.  
He’d return from Camp himself with skills like picking locks and shoplifting. Camp taught him how to fight. Sally hid her old, favorite shotgun in the back of his closet and if Percy noticed, he never said a thing.  
She edited her knowledge of the supernatural as she edited her stories, soon to be books. She printed them in bigger than normal, black font, all capital letters, because Percy had easier time reading it, and she put it in a drawer she knew he didn’t use. If something ever happened to her, Percy would find the information, he would find the weapons, her emergency contact numbers. He’d be okay.  
For now, he was happy, and that, that was truly more than enough.


	6. Epilogue: Never Really Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, here's the last chapter, thanks for everyone who left kudos and a special thank you to FishyPop who left a comment.  
> I have you have fun reading this final chapter and I'll be very grateful if you take a moment to leave a cooment, or a kudos.

Ellen called her when Percy was two or so. Ellen and Guiner were the only ones (back from before) who had her number but Guiner never called. Ellen didn’t call, either, not really, but she did that day.  
“Winchester, John,” she blurted out. “Never hunt with him. Never trust him.”  
“I don’t hunt with anyone,” said Sally, confused, “I don’t hunt, at all.”  
“Good,” said Ellen. “Continue this way.” She didn’t tell Sally Bill was dead in that call. She sent her a letter so by the time it would get to her the gossip would die out and Sally won’t do something stupid, like going against Winchester. Sally wouldn’t have anyway, she had a toddler to take care of.  
(She added Bill to her statistics, he was thirty seven).

Sally heard about United Britania’s flight 2485 on the news. She recognized the signs. It was a tough year, just a few months after Percy’s first quest, and Sally wanted nothing more than to turn off the TV and pretend nothing ever happened. She couldn’t, though, because her parents died in a plane crash, one just like this.  
Her uncle didn’t turn hunter out of need for revenge like so many other hunters did. He looked for the thing that got his brother and sister-in-law killed, but he didn’t obsess over it. It was probably for the best, much healthier attitude and really, when you hunt down monsters you should be prepared for them hunting you right back.  
All of that didn’t change the fact that that thing might’ve just struck again. Sally could live with her parents’ deaths never being avenged, she didn’t think she could live with their killer continuing to kill.  
She made a call to the Roadhouse and Ellan made a call for twenty other contacts she had. In the end of the search she got a number and a name.  
“Hello?” a sleepy voice would answer her and Sally would be reminded that most hunters didn’t wake up early in the morning if they had a choice. She, of course, didn’t have one. She was calling between dressing up and making some sandwiches for her son.  
“Dean Winchester?” She asked. “My name is Sally Jackson, I got your number from Bobby.” Winchester seemed to be trying to contain a yawn. Sally never actually spoke to Bobby, although she heard his name mentioned before (he was kind of a big deal in the hunting community) but it was shorter than to explain how she contacted Ellen (whom Winchester didn’t personally know) and she, in turn, talked to Bobby who then contacted the Winchester brothers.  
“Yeah, he said something about that, it’s about the plane crash case, right?” He asked, obviously trying to shake off his sleepiness.  
“Right,” agreed Sally. “My parents went down trying to stop a flight like that. We always hoped they succeeded when the killing stopped.”  
“I’m sorry,” said Winchester, and he sounded genuine enough. Sally brushed him off.  
“I was a long time ago. So, you got it?” At sixteen, Sally would’ve asked ‘you got it? You got that bastard?!’ At Thirty three she watched her language better. She had a small child at home (and the gods know Percy knew too much profanity as it was).  
“Yeah, it was a demon, in charge of disasters or something like that. Me and Sammy - my brother - got him, exorcised him and all. It won’t show its face again for a long while,” Winchester promised. Sally smiled.  
“Thank you,” she said. It was Winchester’s turn to shake her off.  
“Just doing my job,” he said. Behind her, Sally could hear Percy entering the kitchen.  
“Aren’t we all,” she agreed, “good luck, Dean, we both know we need it.”

Ellen called her when the Gates of Hell were open. Ellen called her when the Apocalypse begun. Ellen didn’t call her when she died, but Bobby had the decency to do it for her. He asked Sally if she could help them. Sally said no. She just got her son back (and he was still in so many pieces), she was going to have another child  
She cried herself to sleep that night. Paul didn’t ask what happened, (she told him a censored version a couple of days later, when she could get the words out of her mouth), he just held her tightly, reminding her she wasn’t alone. Sometimes, that’s all a person needs. Sometimes, that’s all you’re going to get, so you make it enough.

Sally’s daughter was born on March, on the same day her uncle died some twenty one years earlier. For the first time in all these years, Sally picked up the phone and called Guiner (he didn’t answer and she didn’t leave a voicemail).  
She vowed over her daughter’s cradle, just like she vowed over her son’s that she’d have good, happy, safe life. She rather hoped it would be easier this time around. 

Paul knew about Greek gods and Greek monsters and Percy’s dad. They sat him down together and told him about it all. Sally sat him down alone, and told him about Gabe. She never sat him down and told him about hunting, but she did tell Percy.  
Her son, just a couple of months shy of eighteen, so tall and strong and kind, sat next to her as she baked them all some blue chocolate-chip cookies, the way he did his entire childhood (sometimes helping, sometimes making a face like he was being punished, but so often still there) and listened as she told him about ghosts and werewolves and shapeshifters.  
Sally’s life was built on lies. It always will be. But this one lie had been heavy on her back for too long. Not the lie she told Percy about a safe world, this one she didn’t regret. He son had twelve years of innocent and that wasn’t something she took for granted. It was the lie she told herself, about the past being the past.  
Sally was thirty seven years old. She was a mother. She was a hunter. She was strong. She was breakable. She won’t fall apart.  
She still had a lot ahead of her.


End file.
